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Friday, January 13, 2012

Assume you are making assumptions

Remember when you were a kid and you asked your parents for something specific and they either said no, or ignored you. You may have assumed that they didn’t like you or were just mean or stupid. And remember when your first true love broke up with you. When it happened to me, there was no e-mail or texting. So the only way to communicate was by phone. Sometimes I would leave a desperate message. And sometimes I would talk, but whoever I was trying to reach never responded with what I wanted them to say. Which was probably, “I made a mistake and can’t live without you.” (OK this happened with David but I convinced him that all the other women would never make him happy – which is pretty interesting since I had put all the precious possessions he had left in my care.)

Never mind, we are living happily ever after. I was right. None of those other women would have made him happy or given him the amazing kid I did. But that’s not the point of this blob. People make assumptions to fill in the blanks. You reach out, they reach out, if it goes on long enough the “fill in the blank” can become, “you don’t want to speak to me.” This need not be the case. Your timing was simply off. You didn’t hear the phone. You were in the shower. Or maybe, and this is totally rare, you just didn’t answer the phone because you wanted some time and space to be by yourself, (a concept unheard of in the 24/7 you can’t be by yourself, I must reach you), culture.

We all make assumptions. We do it because we always feel we need to fill in the empty space that lies between, “you said and I said”. Aye, there’s the rub…. Too much empty space. Or maybe what you said and I said. Or, maybe an assumption is made because no one says anything – what we meant to say, is assumed.

Tonight I had a conversation with someone I love. She was telling me about a friend of hers who, no matter what my friend does, her friend never responds. “I call and there’s never a return call.” , “I leave messages that never get answered”, “No matter what I do, I never hear back. I think she must be angry with me. I think I must have offended her. I don’t know what I can do to make it different and I can't find out.

This is why I should have been a life coach… “Maybe”, I said, “It has nothing to do with you at all.” Maybe, she is just not someone who feels like she needs to respond. Maybe, she has her own stuff going on and because you are her friend, she knows you will understand the lack of communication.

Now, back to the Presidential Primary Race. When did we even mention that you ask. You assumed I was not going to talk about politics because I was talking about assumptions. But that’s all Presidential politics is…. Someone assumes they can run the government better than anyone else, and they assume that they can raise enough money and build a good enough campaign to get elected. Then there is an assumption that people will like you better than anyone else and you can make their lives better. Whew, that’s a lot of assumptions. Personally, I would rather not assume that anyone knows how to be the President. It would just be nice if all the people who think they know better than the rest of us, would not make assumptions about our lives. If they would learn bout the people they want to lead, and follow a path that just makes good sense for most of us. Aye… there’s another rub. Good Common Sense. We're Just Sayin... Iris